Elementary school shooting gun control pissing contest

[MadImmortalMan]

The 2nd Amend talks about gun ownership not ammo ownership.

No it says arms. It doesn't specify what kind.

[11B4V]

The 2nd Amend talks about gun ownership not ammo ownership.

No it says arms. It doesn't specify what kind.

and that's not ammunition, so what's your point. Are you saying all "Arms"? Swords, knives, bows, crossbows..get real. GUNS

1. (Military / Firearms, Gunnery, Ordnance & Artillery) weapons collectively See also small arms
2. (Military) military exploits prowess in arms
3. (History / Heraldry) the official heraldic symbols of a family, state, etc., including a shield with distinctive devices, and often supports, a crest, or other insignia
bear arms
a.  (Military) to carry weapons
b.  (Military) to serve in the armed forces
c.  (History / Heraldry) to have a coat of arms
(Military)
in or under arms armed and prepared for war
(Military)
lay down one's arms to stop fighting; surrender
(Military)
present arms Military
a.  a position of salute in which the rifle is brought up to a position vertically in line with the body, muzzle uppermost and trigger guard to the fore
b.  the command for this drill
(Military)
take (up) arms to prepare to fight
to arms! arm yourselves!
up in arms indignant; prepared to protest strongly

[Ed Anger]

A pointed stick

[sbr]

http://www.azcentral.com/insiders/laurieroberts/2013/01/05/the-insanity-of-arming-the-mentally-ill/?sf8381924=1

Kristi's story: the insanity of arming the mentally ill

Pain radiated through the phone when Kristi Stadler called the crisis hotline in the wee hours one May morning.

"I would like to kill myself ...," she told Luis, the voice at the other end of the line. "I know that life is an option for me but I know it's been an option for the past 12 years and it hasn't gotten any better and when it does it always gets bad again."

Terry Stadler tears up as he talks about his daughter's 12-year battle with mental illness. She fought it with everything she had, he says. With repeated hospitalizations, with medication and an electrical implant designed to help with her deep depression. With crisis counseling and years of work with psychiatrists.

She fought hard, he says, right up until that day in May 2009, when the Phoenix Police Department handed her a loaded gun. Fifteen hours later, Kristi Lee Stadler was dead.

And the police department? Turns out it's not illegal to give a mentally ill person a loaded gun. Just as it's not illegal for someone like Kristi – an emotionally unstable woman who killed herself in part because she was having "horrible horrible" thoughts about her infant daughter – to be able to walk into a gun store, order up a .38 and a box of ammo and walk off onto the streets of Phoenix.

Such is the state of gun laws in this state and in this country – as we have seen and seen and so sadly seen, with tragic result.


Kristi grew up in Ahwatukee with her father Terry, an airline pilot, and a stepmother. Her mother left the family when Kristi and her twin brother were 2 years old. Kristi's battle with mental illness began when she was 12 and attempted suicide by overdosing on aspirin. Over the next 12 years, she would repeatedly attempt to take her life by various means though often the attempts seemed half hearted, doctors would later say.

Kristi had a daughter in October 2008 and though Terry worried about how motherhood would affect Kristi's illness, she seemed "on top of the world," he says. Things were good through Christmas that year, then her illness hit hard. By early February, the child's father had taken away their daughter, apparently fearing for her safety, and Kristi bought herself a .38. Despite her mental illness, she was legally able to buy the gun because she had always cooperated with her treatment and thus had never been involuntarily committed to a mental hospital by a judge.

On Feb. 6, 2009, she hiked onto South Mountain and called her psychiatrist, threatening to shoot herself. The psychiatrist notified police and met them at the site, handing an officer her cell phone so that he could talk Kristi down. When it was over, police confiscated the gun for safekeeping.

Kristi would spend the next week in a mental hospital and the next month undergoing treatment for alcoholism. She was released into a halfway house but was kicked out in late April because she had been unable to get a job and had returned to drinking.

So, of course, it was time for the police to return Kristi's gun.

Knowing that she had a history of mental illness.

Knowing that she had threatened suicide two months earlier.

Knowing that she had a psychiatrist, whose contact information was listed on the police report of the February incident. Unfortunately, no one ever called her to ask whether it would be wise to give Kristi a gun.

Instead, police did the requisite "Brady check", verifying that Kristi had never been ordered by a judge into treatment, and proceeded to track her down to let her know she could come get her gun.

Kristi picked up her gun and her bullets on May 7, 2009.

She died just after 4 a.m. on May 8.

Her father sued both Phoenix police and the Department of Public Safety, which he believes mishandled the situation after being dispatched to assist his daughter. For Phoenix police to return a gun to a person they know is mentally ill is "absolutely total gross negligence," he said.

"They took the gun away from her for a reason. That reason was that she was unsafe to have the gun. The community was also in danger with her in possession of that weapon and then they turn around, with no information, and give it right back to her. That brings up a question: why in the hell did you take it away in the first place?"

A police spokesman referred me to the city's attorney in the lawsuit, who did not return a call. In court papers, the city contended that federal and state law required police to give Kristi her gun back.

"Had the city not returned Kristi's gun, she would have possessed a viable civil rights action against the city for violating her Second and Fourteenth Amendment rights," attorney Michele Iafrate  wrote.

Under that thinking, I suppose the police would have returned Jared Loughner's gun, had it been him and not Kristi on that mountain.

U.S. District Court Judge Susan Bolton dismissed Terry Stadler's lawsuit last month, noting that the police followed the law. "Plaintiff suggests that the court develop a new limitation on the constitutional right to bear arms that would require all state and local governments to determine that an individual is not at risk of committing suicide prior to returning a seized firearm," Bolton wrote. "The Court believes that establishing such a limitation is a legislative function, not a judicial one."

As it just so happens, the Legislature gets underway on Jan. 14. Given Newtown, it seems fitting that our leaders would rethink our current practice of putting guns into the hands of the mentally ill.

Ben Van Houten, managing attorney of the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, says states can and some do impose additional restrictions. Under California law, for example, Kristi could not have gotten her gun back so soon after a threatened suicide.

"Mental health is one of those areas where there are fairly narrow prohibitions under federal law so it's no surprise that tragedies happen," Van Houten told me.

Terry Stadler lost his lawsuit and he may lose his house, as Phoenix and the state are asking that he be ordered to pay $450,000 to cover their legal fees. But he's not dropping his battle to keep the community and the many Kristis of this world safe.

He is hoping to find a legislator to take up the cause. He proposes, among other things, that a suicidal person requiring police intervention be prohibited from possessing firearms until a psychiatrist certifies that the person is no longer a threat to himself or others.

Incoming House Health Committee Chairwoman Heather Carter has agreed to meet with Stadler and consider what could be done.

"You hear a story like this," she said. "How do you fall through the cracks like that?"

You fall through the cracks because the gun lobby in this country has refused to consider common-sense restrictions that would keep guns out of the hands of the mentally ill. You fall because we have a Legislature whose answer is always more guns, not fewer. You fall because the police are either unable or unwilling to ask questions before returning a gun to a mentally unstable person.

"You want to talk about mental health and insanity," Terry Stadler said. "This is insanity. Having information that she is suffering from mental illness and giving the gun back. I want the Phoenix Police Department to stand up and tell me to my face that they were right."

Before they and state legislators who will inevitably balk at anything that smacks of gun control do that, they might want to listen to the words of 24-year-old Kristi, during her last hour on this earth.

"I went and picked up my gun today because they gave it back to me because they're very, very stupid and now I have my gun and it's loaded and I'd like to shoot myself," she told Luis, the crisis counselor. "So there's my dilemma. I'm a little drunk ... When I try to kill myself I'm usually drunk. It makes it easier. I've tried this many times and I've been unsuccessful but a gun makes it very easy to be successful in killing yourself. "

(Column published Jan. 6, 2013, The Arizona Republic)

[CountDeMoney]

Nice.

[Ed Anger]

Saw the early list of gun control proposals. Big whoop.

[mongers]

Nice.

I don't know, aren't you reaching a tipping point in the US, where you're soon going to be considered weird or mentally ill if you Don't have a gun ?

[CountDeMoney]

It's about Freedom and Liberty, man.  You just don't get it.

[mongers]

It's about Freedom and Liberty, man.  You just don't get it.

Yep, must be because I'm only a subject of HMQ.

[grumbler]

Thanks for the example of how to fuck up in writing about a news story, sbr.  My guess is that The Arizona Republic doesn't have very high standards for its columnists.

[Valmy]

and that's not ammunition, so what's your point. Are you saying all "Arms"? Swords, knives, bows, crossbows..get real. GUNS

Does the Second Amendment cover swords?  I honestly have no idea.

[ulmont]

and that's not ammunition, so what's your point. Are you saying all "Arms"? Swords, knives, bows, crossbows..get real. GUNS

Does the Second Amendment cover swords?  I honestly have no idea.

The modern conclusion is yes.
http://www.volokh.com/2012/06/20/right-to-keep-and-bear-arms-includes-knives/

[derspiess]

I think there is some difference of opinion on 'assault swords' though.

[Valmy]

I think there is some difference of opinion on 'assault swords' though.

Damn does that include my Landsknecht Zweihänder?

[PDH]

I think there is some difference of opinion on 'assault swords' though.

Damn does that include my Landsknecht Zweihänder?

You're safe since it was made before 1900.